Lisa Benson for September 17, 2013

So lets say I’m a business owner who sells shoes. I have 8 part-time employees so that there are always two workers to help customers. These are high school and college kids, who are more than happy to have an entry level job that gives them experience and spending cash.Suddenly my payroll expense goes up 25% during some of the worst years in history of retail. I can’t raise prices due to the bad economy and I’m barely holding on as it is. Now I will have to shell out over a Grand a month more to comply with the government mandate. What to do?1. Call it quits and layoff all 8 employees and go out of business.2. Layoff 4 employees so that I only have 1 employee working at a time.3. Have myself and family live in poverty.Unless you’re a full commie and want to force the owner to live in poverty, then options 1 or 2 will be the action taken by the small business owner.Doesn’t look good for the young people in Ca who already can’t find a job.Welcome to Liberal Land kids!

Everytime the minimum wage has been raised there has been an outcry that jobs would suffer and businesses would fail. Yett it was only in the 1980s when Michael Milkey’s junk bonds created a small recession and in 2008 when financial institutions used practices that drove us into the recession from which we are still trying to recover that jobs vanished.I didn’t do a lot of research on this and welcome objective counterpoints, but I personally do not mind paying more for products and services if it means that my neighbors are having a better quality of life and small business owners are able to stay in business. It’s the CEOs who award themselves 7 or 8 digit bonuses while failing to invest in business infrastructure or their employees for whom I have the least concern and most contempt.but just for fun…..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ogQ0uge06oRespectfully,C.

Then nobody buys his shoes because they’re cheaper elsewhere and then he goes out of business. Way to go!

Lucky for him he’s wearing a golden parachute and there are 49 other states to move to like the 1000+ businesses that left California last year….

It looks like Ms Benson is geeking for the one percent again. The minimum wage workers have seen their real incomes shrink by 20 percent since Reagan.

Can anyone say “income disparity”, or does it stick in your throat?

Thank you for that reply, me9970. It is personal experiences that help round out the discussion. I would be curious to know if the wages of the owners/CEOs of your company were also frozen. I have seen too many instances where workers are turned against workers with just such tactics as you mention, but if the wages were frozen universally, if workers were laid off so that executives could increase their own pay, then I would suggest my statement stands. I did qualify my support of such a rise in min wage by saying, “I personally do not mind paying more for products and services if it means that my neighbors are having a better quality of life and small business owners are able to stay in business.” People fired from jobs do not have a better quality of life, and small business owners who are driven from their business can’t hire anyone. I totally respect and appreciate your position and believe the only real cure for our middle class is for American products made overseas to be subject to very high import taxes. When the free trade agreements were first introduced, American companies were going to sell what they made overseas in the countries where they were making them, not exporting them back to the USA. The balance has to be restored. Thank you again for an excellent, first hand account of the down side of this.^@ PAJ - Howgoesit Neighbor? And yes, I consider you one of my neighbors. When I stopped at Bojangles Sunday morning, I saw nine people working the counter. Four of them were easily identifiable as being under 30. Two were well over 40. If so many of our neighbors weren’t forced to work one, two, or even three minimum wage jobs just to survive I wouldn’t be so supportive of an increase in the minimum wage. I almost feel there should be a minimum wage for people under the age of 21 and another for those over 22 or older. The way CEOs get their bonuses, depending on what source you use for your info, is rather arcane. Would you agree that the best solution for keeping the minimum wage low is to increase access and opportunity to jobs in manufacturing, construction, and production for older workers? Could you agree that if parents only had to work 40 hours a week they might be home more often in order to help kids out of trouble and giving attention to schoolwork?Thank you for an excellent reply with which I have NO disagreement. ^@ Tim Culberson - Another excellent reply dropped in my lap. Thank you Mr. Culberson. Nearly everything I buy from the internet is something I cannot buy locally. I live in an area where there are three other cities connected to the one in which I live, and I always try to buy within my own city first because that business is paying taxes to the same people I do. There are several farmers within 12 miles of me, only one within my city, where I go to buy whatever fresh veggies I need and they have. When I look online for things, I always use the “find nearby” option first. I’m in VA. Do you know how hard it is to find New Orleans Saints gear in this area? That’s just an example, but I can add more. If a small business can order something I need/want and I can wait, I prefer to do it that way.My thanks to all three replies, for their content and their tone. We all need to write our legislators and encourage them to work in a civil, respectful, and bipartisan manner in order to rebuild our middle class, and in doing so, our nation.Respectfully,C.

So you like the layoff workers idea?Ok.

If you don’t like living in CA or the current political climate y’all could move to Utah. Wide open spaces, no social services to speak of, no culture to speak of, and a government you’d just love. Perhaps Texas would be more to your choosing at least they have South by Southwest once a year.

“ConserveGov also didn’t take into account that the “worst years in history of retail” would improve as more consumers have more money.”——————————————————————--——No they wouldn’t have more money to spend on shoes because everything else they have to buy will also increase because of the artificial 25% raise the Ca gov. decided to give all entry-level workers. Who do you know lately that has received a 25% raise for doing the exact same work, in the exact same position, whether their work has been crappy or good?I’ll answer for you: Nobody!

If I demand and receive a higher wage in order to afford purchasing necessities or luxuries, everything is OK until everyone else in the economy follows suit. Then the prices of those necessities and luxuries will go up to reflect the increased labor costs, and I will need another wage hike. Its called an inflationary spiral. The alternative is for the business owner to re-evaluate his need for your services. Small businesses either do without, impose more work on the owner, or lead to getting more family members working “off the books”. Big business heaps more responsibility on individuals or relies on some balance of overtime and part time employment to achieve its needs without running into minimum wage issues. The only person screwed in the deal is the entry-level worker who cannot find that first job to allow him to build a skill and an employment history. But this is perfect for the ruling class, since this person will addicted to government handouts and will vote for whichever party guarantees they gravy train will continue.

The dittohead mentality never gives up. Where I live in a tiny town, far from any wholesalers, OR retailers, the web is a source of purchase. Our only successful businesses (3) simply market what people need, and want to buy, and the provide service. The minimum wage here is well above the federal, and though it can hurt these small businesses, claiming the minimum wage hurts big business, with high sales volumes is pure BS!

It’s been pointed out that if Apple, among other big corporations, moved production back to the U.S., instead of China, where wages are often less than 1/100th of U.S., the cost of products would increase less than 20%. A 14% increase in the minimum wage over three years would hardly dent the amount of increase in costs, in MOST AREAS AND PRODUCTS.

The minimum should be determined by area, such as SMSA’s, not just flat across the whole nation, and thus be keyed to LOCAL cost of living, and sales volumes.

But as to Lisa, as usual, she’s been eating too much of what those bears do in the woods, and passing it along as “thought”.

Raising the minimum wage hurts those who do more than the minimum yet don’t see a commensurate raise. Someone who makes 20 dollars an hour is devalued when the minimum wage is raised but his wage is not.

California’s business climate is the worst in the US. Forbes ranks it 50th in terms of being business friendly. Since 2008 over 21,000 businesses in California have either closed and or left the state.In that same time the state has lost over 850,000 jobs.AB 32 is now starting to hit larger companies that have their own generation on site. Campbell’s Soup in Sacramento announced they are closing in large part because of the carbon tax and AB 32. They have a co-generation plant running on waste products from their manufacturing processes. That is a loss of over 700 jobs.

Raising minimum wage in a business climate will only excerbate the problem. I know if I owned a fast food restaruant, for example, I’d be shopping for self-serve kiosks to replace counter help who could then be laid off to pay for the raises of the few remaining employees. Better to automate than pay more for labor than it is worth.

It isn’t the well trained and educated that face job loss with a high minimum wage: It is the marginally employable and poorly educated that will be hurt most and first.

“Going back to Cali…to Cali…to Cali. No…I don’t think so.”

enoki: Forbes also had 61 BILLIONAIRES who didn’t rip off enough to make it to the top 400 list. Poor babies!